You Do Not Fuck With This Man

You just don't. I can't think of a single movie where it would be a good idea to fuck with Clint Eastwood. And from some of the stories I've heard about in Hollywood, it's probably not a good idea to fuck with him in real life either. Shit, even when he had a monkey for a sidekick (sorry, I meant ape) you didn't fuck with his sidekick. And Gran Torino has every bad ass motherfucker Clint's ever played rolled into one bitter old son of a bitch.

I've been watching a lot of comedies for the past two months (though for about two days last week it was violent and bleak movies), just trying to keep my spirits up. 'Mallrats' has never failed me, nor has most of Kevin Smith's work (though 'Chasing Amy' is a bit too painful to watch) but it's been getting old and a lot of the new comedies feel... cheap. The last mind-blowingly refreshingly good comedy I saw was 'The 40 Year Old Virgin' and though there've been a few since that have been good, nothing particularly exciting or surprising.

The last thing I expected was to find myself laughing throughout a Clint Eastwood drama.

Don't get me wrong - the movie's not a comedy, and I wasn't laughing at the movie as if it was so bad it was humorously good. I was laughing in surprise, in joy at watching the movie. Most of all, I was laughing in rejoice at how unabashedly badass Clint is.

Like I said earlier, this is all those characters of his that you've loved rolled into one - the political incorrectness of Dirty Harry Callahan, the no-bullshit attitude and moral code of every cowboy he's ever been from The Man With No Name to the Outlaw Josey Wales. All rolled into a man that's knocking on heavens door.

And he growls. He fuckin' growls, like a pitbull that you've just accidentally fucked with.

This is an old school man in every respect, and it's insanely refreshing to see a character like this on screen. He's not a bad man, and you can see his heart if you look past the unpleasentries. He's just a man, the way men were portrayed all those years ago, back when being a man meant something. And just watching this man go through this movie was an insanely fun ride.

And don't get me started on the direction and the script. I think anyone who's reviewed a Clint-directed movie has said the same thing - lean as fuck. Not an ounce of fat in the direction or the script, not a scene in that's unrequired, not a shot that's indulgent, just what you need and full stop.

By now you've probably noticed I haven't touched on the story at all. Why should I? There are tons of reviews out there and there's the trailer to check out. It's a movie where Clint is Clint, which is one of those things that are just a joy to watch.

Check it out. Find it. Slip it in your DVD player, sit back and enjoy. No CGI, no fancy editing, no pretty stars and starlets either banking in another paycheck or trying to prove their acting chops - just a good story starring Clint Eastwood. And if this truly is his last appearance as an actor, then it's a fitting end to a brilliant career.

Communication Breakdown

So I write a blog. I write what I feel and think or post whatever I find is interesting or disturbing. And I like it. I enjoy writing my blog. I enjoy writing here because even though I hope whatever I write is something interesting for others to read, the only censorship is myself, there's no budget and no expectation of financial returns, it's writing for the pure joy of it.

But it'll never replace the real world.

What I write on my blog, I write for anyone to read. When I want to talk to my friends, I meet my friends. I look them in the eye and enjoy a conversation, because in my opinion there is no better way to communicate to another human being than face to face.

Don't get me wrong, I love how the internet connects millions together. Through Facebook I've managed to catch up with friends I thought long since forgotten and helped me pimp out whatever work or events or whatever I have to the public. E-mails have helped speed up work, helped me communicate with friends across the sea. And both have helped me communicate with others in general when I can't meet them.

But it's not a replacement. I'd rather talk to someone face to face than just read text or even through the wonderful world of Skype. I don't have MSN or Yahoo messenger for precisely that reason - it's like a poor excuse for a conversation.

Even the great communication tool we had before the internet, Alexander Graham Bell's telephone. It's great to communicate with, but it's not a replacement to me. If there's no other way to communicate but the phone or the internet I'll gladly use it but it's not a replacement.

I write this because I realize that with some people I know this is the only way they communicate with me, even if they're just a stone's throw away, and even when the shit hit's the fan and when there may be important things to talk about, it's still the phone, the net, anything. Anything but meeting up.

Perhaps with a lot of people these days there's no real difference, but to me there is a huge difference. Many people more intelligent than me have written reams of text on how things like the internet have severed real human interaction, real human connection, real conversations, making us lose touch of one of the many things that make us human - the fact that we communicate with each other.

When one person talks to another, it's not just their mouth that's talking, but their entire body - their eyes, their hands, their legs, everything. It's why on-line poker is never going to beat the real thing because it's sterile - you make a guess based on someone's on-line actions but you see nothing, absolutely nothing.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I would rather have a five minute conversation face to face with a friend of mine rather than a five hour conversation over the phone. If I can make time for a friend and they're in the same time zone as me, I would make time to meet them, especially if I thought what I was saying was important.

The internet, phones, whatever - they're all just tools of convenience, not replacements. And if a person meant something to me, even the slightest, I'd rather look them in the eye than stare at their profile picture.

Pretty ironic, I know, for someone who has a Facebook account, MySpace account, Friendster account and two e-mail addresses. But if there's one thing I realized today it's that if you're within short driving distance of someone and you spend more time talking to them on the phone or on the internet than meeting them face to face, either that person means as much to you as a random person that's added you on Facebook that you may have met but aren't too sure thus keeping your distance or you just don't want to meet that person (and vice versa).

Even starfish don't keep to themselves and they literally don't even have brains.

Kingfisher Birds and Bad Craziness

I was leaning against the railings in Taman Tun's answer to Lake Gardens, sipping coffee after a night of insomnia surrounded by octogenarians taking walks and practicing tai-chi, when I noticed the bird.

It looked like a kingfisher, though I'm not sure that particular breed existed in this country. Nonetheless, it took me by surprise. The bird seemed to be staring at the turtles just in front of it, popping up and blowing bubbles in the water, poking their noses out. Perhaps they were having a conversation, I don't know. What I did know was that at that moment there were no one-way conversations going on in my head that had kept me awake the whole night through.

Over 62 hours ago on a Friday evening I was sat in The Hub helping out TripleVI transfer footage from a camera to a hard drive. There were four tapes, a long and arduous process, and as customary for TripleVI whilst waiting he lit up a joint. After a while I got bored and decided to join in, only taking one or two puffs, just to pass the time.

And that's when it began.

I decided, whilst waiting, to put on a DVD - the Coen brother's "Burn After Reading". Perhaps it was the weed or perhaps the movie had been hyped up a bit too much by my fellow filmmaking friends. Regardless, we both starred at the screen wondering what the plot of the movie was whilst I, slowly, was losing the plot myself.

Five days prior to this event I had a revelation after a number of heart-wrenching moments with the Tamagotchi. The biggest revelation came when the Tamagotchi sent me a song that she had recorded for me many moons ago but at the time I could never receive it. Listening to that song made me realize more than ever that she did care for me, truthfully and honestly, and I truly understood two things. One, the immensity of how much I must have hurt her, and two, how much hope there was in the world.

The second part may seem confusing, especially in a post that offers no backstory nor names or faces of the parties involved, and especially since it's all written in a style that's a poor imitation at best of the great Gonzo journalist himself, Hunter S. Thompson, but in a nutshell what transpired in my head and heart was this: the Tamagotchi made me feel a sensation towards another person that I hadn't felt in more than a decade, a sensation I thought would only happen once in life and was gone forever. And the fact that it happened again, against all odds, is truly a sign of hope - that things do get better. I had ruined my chances with the Tamagotchi but in the long arduous process of pouring out our hearts and brains I was, in a sense, reborn in a strange way. I could see the path that my life was taking and I knew what that path lead to, and it was a path I had made a promise to myself as a child I would never take. It was this revelation that lead to my post on Love.

It was this revelation that kept me going through most of the week, together with the help of John, Paul, George and Ringo. But after TripleVI left, I realized the effects of that stinking weed.

Introspection, paranoia and increasingly negative and completely irrational thoughts swirled constantly through my head and my gut, coursing through my veins and all the hope that I had believed in throughout the week felt lost. Though I knew that there was nothing wrong with feeling emotions, whether good or bad, this feeling was completely irrational and, worst of all, fucked beyond compare.

The sensation continued over night, and stayed for the next two days. I'd alternate between having a level head and keeping things in control to feeling the insane urge to punt a terrier. On Sunday morning I woke up after a disastrous dream involving the Tamagotchi saying something so painful it bolted me out of the bed in an instant.

By Sunday night I couldn't sleep, for fear of more dreams.

From 1am to 6am I tossed, turned, switched positions and air cond temperatures, but nothing worked. My shoulders and neck felt particular fucked and nothing could be done. By 6.30am I thought to hell with it and had a shower. By 7am I was in the park.

At 7.15am I saw the bird.

Now, as I write this, I think most of the crap is out of my system, though I still feel some of it lingering.Most of it, however, dissapeared when I saw the bird. As the bird looked in one direction one of the turtles out of its sight popped up and faced the opposite direction, upwards.

And for some reason I was fascinated.

I tried to capture it in the picture above but I was too far away and didn't have my zoom lens. Regardless, I had to capture it. Like the dancing plastic bag in American Beauty, there was something magical happening before me.

Behind me, a muzak version of 'Rasa Sayang' was playing on a boom box as the golden oldies clapped through their exercises. Health buffs jogged with iPods on their arms and a bottle of water in one hand. The sky was a watered down version of night, with a stream of day trickling through it, slowly seeping into the world.

Somewhere, out there, was hope.

Experience This

I sincerely believe there are two types of writers, especially when it comes to screenplays.

The first type channels specific life experiences of their own into their writing - the names, faces, places and outcomes may be different to what happened, but the similarities to those real life experiences are there. Perhaps it's too exorcise whatever demons the writer may have lurking inside them, perhaps it's just because they're not too imaginative.

The second type writes purely from their imagination, either what they wish would happen or wish wouldn't happen in the world - the fantastical, the imaginary, the down-right weird. These are the ones whose ideas often start off with "wouldn't it be cool if..." or "imagine this..."

The best writers have both traits.

I reckon I've always belonged to the former - the type that writes about what he's experienced - but I've found myself turning more and more towards the latter.

The recent ideas I've been coming up with have been filled with large explosions, fight sequences, espionage, poker and Satan. And I'm quite sure I know why.

Because up until recently I've been blocking out my experiences for the past few years.

My original reasoning before this was that I needed to write something that made some dough or write something in Malay which makes me very nervous as the main thing I love writing is dialogue, but the fact of the matter is they're all just excuses.

It's strange - I've actually been complaining to myself that there aren't any personal experiences to write about when in actuality there have been plenty. I've just either not been able to see it from the correct point of view or simply didn't want to touch those experiences again with a ten foot pole.

It feels good to be able to look at things the way I used to again. It's incredibly refreshing, for one. The instability in some of my more human traits are still there, but they're no longer something I want to hide or repress. To accept life as is, the experiences life gives you, is a good feeling indeed, and I think I know what things to write about now.

Like my bowel movements.

Love, Or Something Like It

Let's talk, you and I. Let's talk about love.

It's been a good long while since I actually wrote about anything deeply personal, and for good reason - I knew what I would write. And I think I'm a bit too old to be writing self-serving emotional dhiarhea that's poorly disguising the want and need for someone out in that big ol' cyberspace to understand, to say "it's okay" and kiss one's botty better. And if it wasn't a post about that, it would be a post full of macho posturing, an attempt to build up confidence and armor to shield one from the pains of emotions whilst simultaneously trying to tell the world "look at me! I am strong and powerful and I can withstand any shit you give me!"

Balls to that.

From the moment I started blogging I believed that there is nothing else to blog about but the truth. If you believe in something or feel something and are absolutely ok with the idea that you believe or feel that something then there should be no fear in writing about it. I enjoy writing, that's what I do, and one of the things a blog helps me do is keep writing, using them words so that I don't not write so good as I used to have.

And right now I feel absolutely ok with talking about my life with regards to love.

"The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread." - Mother Teresa

Ever since I was a child I'd been fascinated by the concept of love. It was something I had seen on TV and in the cinema and read about in books and it appealed to me - this unexplainable phenomenon that brought people together, filled with passion and affection and romance. Whilst most boys my age were still under the impression that girls had that mysterious and infectious disease called 'cooties' I had no qualms with the opposite sex and I still don't. Whilst my peers may think of women as something to be conquered or approach with caution I think women are fascinating creatures.

Even though the 'cooties' disease no longer became infectious as girls turned to women but instead mutated into a monthly scheduled emotional defect known as PMS (that's a joke, ladies. Have a sense of humor for God's sake).


And of course, over time, one grows up to the age where girls and boys start 'discovering' themselves.

"Where there is love, there is pain." - Spanish Proverb

I remember my first crush with a French exchange student. I remember the moment I laid eyes on her and remember the dizzying sensation of being in her presence.

I also remember a different dizzying sensation of being in her presence after she went out with a guy who pretended to be my friend so that he could get closer to her and make a move.

Ouch.

I remember my first love. I remember how connected I felt to her, how incredible that first kiss under a tree in Hyde park felt and how insanely good it felt to be with someone who felt something for me.

I also remember being dumped over the phone and subsequently beating the phone up. I remember still trying to be friends with her whilst consoling her over how heart broken she was after a friend of mine who went out with her after me dumped her and I remember said 'friend' enrolling in my A level college and being a total dick as far as this past relationship was concerned.

Double Ouch. Goddamn. I hope at the very least my circle of friends is better than it was back then.

I'd go on with more examples, but they'd start to look repetitive and the point is clear - love can be a painful goddamn thing to experience. Unrequited love, more to the point. Plato once said that "love is a grave and mental disease" and in a way he's right - love defies all forms of logic and reason. It is every single emotion ever possible to experience, both positive and negative, bundled into one huge heart shaped blob.

I know a lot of people who've experienced the things I've written above - the heart ache that comes with love, and as time goes by and people get older I notice how much love shapes a personality. Or rather, the hurt of love. It reaches to the point that it becomes a dirty word, much dirtier than 'fuck' or 'shit' or 'Rais'.

In particular, I've seen how heartbreak can cause cynicism. How it creates defence mechanisms designed to protect from heartbreak yet at the same time turning the person into someone who doesn't believe in love.

I've seen countless friends who've gone from helpless romantics to mysoginistic players. I've seen girls go from sweet and adorable to pessimistic and cold. All within the single snap of the fingers of love.

And, for a time, I was set to go the same way too. All the way until I met someone who made me feel like that sixteen year old underneath a tree again.

And once again, history repeats itself.

(Except this time no back-stabbing friends were involved, thank fuck.)

But like Kyle in South Park (or is it Stan?) I learnt something today (or rather, over the course of the past month). I learnt that I too could easily take that one step closer towards being colder, more cynical, more pessimistic and more of a mysoginistic cunt.

But I also learnt that I'm not gonna. And I'm not gonna for a very simple reason - I believe in love.

"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." - Franklin P. Jones

Some would say that hardening up and accepting that love is a bitch is growing up - it's becoming a man. The type of man that sleeps all night, works all day, cuts down trees, eats his lunch, goes to the lavatory, spends his Wednesdays shopping and has buttered scones for tea.

Or something like that.

There are people out there who'll tell you that love and romance is a dated concept, an explanation for sexual urges for the times way back in the day when having a shag in civilized society required marriage. There are those that'll tell you that to fall in love is setting yourself up for hurt. There are those that'll tell you that there's no point in love, it's just something to explain the crush your feeling when your young. They'll tell you it's a fools game, a childish concept and something one should grow out of in their teens.

Well, balls to that too, you bunch of pessimistic cowards.

I'd rather be a sixteen year old hurt by love but still believing in it rather than a thirty year old who thinks women are nothing more than sperm receptacles.

I believe in love. I believe in the sheer joy and beauty and the awesomeness of it all. I believe in hope, that things can get better. I believe love because to believe in love is to be idealistic, and there is nothing wrong with idealism. Like love, people stop being idealistic the second all their hopes and dreams shatter.

To believe in love, to be idealistic, to believe in hope in the world is akin to being like a child, and what the fuck is so wrong with wanting to feel like a child again? Do you remember what it felt like to be a child before 'the real world' started creeping again? Life was fucking fantastic back then! You believed anything could happen, anything could be done, anything was possible. Lego would have you transfixed for hours!

But as people grow up and these feelings get shattered people start to face the world with a more 'real world' attitude - self-defense and self-preservation sweats from their every pore. And I look at all these people and I just think it's sad.

Without love, there would be no such thing as art. It's the reason music and movies seem so hollow these days - the love is gone and replaced by materialism and wealth. The last four brilliant films that I saw which came out recently were Slumdog Millionaire, The Wrestler, Star Trek and In Bruges, and in each one you can feel the love the filmmaker and the actors have for the material, the sheer passion in it. Two of them were big hits, two were small indie flicks, neither category matters - the love was there. I wish I could list down the last four brilliant music tracks I've heard recently but unfortunately, I hear no love on the radio except when they play an MJ track in memory of the man which just further shows how terrible music has gotten nowadays. You may like Lady Gaga, but I wouldn't let her ride my disco stick for a bazillion bucks.

I will not tell a lie. This past month I have gone through more pain than I could ever possibly imagine, but I also realized something - even though I had pretty much given up on the love that I felt when I was a young, bright eyed lad with so many pimples I looked like someone drew a face on a lychee peel, even after all that I still ended up meeting someone who made me feel like how I felt when I was Khai the human lychee boy. And whilst I can do without the spots I don't ever want to grow up again as far as love is concerned because it is an incredible feeling.

The only difference between now and then is at least now I'm a little wiser, a little smarter and a little more savvy. One of the biggest things I've found that's held me back for the past few years is that I forgot how to dream and hope and most of all, love. And though it's because of these things that I now find myself unrequited, it does not validate the belief that to dream and hope and love is to be hurt constantly. No. If anything, it proves that anything is possible. Absolutely anything.

It would be so much easier to say "fuck you" to love. It would be easier and a lot less painful to 'accept' that shit will always hit the fan so you better fling some shit back, but then I remember what I used to tell myself when I was growing up - I used to tell myself that I never want to grow up. Now, to reduce ones self to the mind set of a child is pointless because we grow, it's inevitable. But it's not impossible to change one's point of view, to look at everything with that same child-like innocence and belief in the impossible. Imagine looking at the world through those eyes, except now your a little older, your a little wiser, and you know how things work. Imagine how goddamn incredible that would be.

These were the thoughts that helped me sleep last night. This was what went through my head when I still felt the pangs of pain. The Dalai Lama once said "we can live without religion and meditation, but we cannot survive without human affection", and he's right (come on, he's the Dalai Lama. Are you gonna question the Dalai Lama?). I believe that all those people living with their shields and body armor merely think they're happy because they've cut off the concept of love from their lives in order to survive. I'm not knocking it at all, everyone has a right to live the way they wanna live. But I do think that deep down they could be so much happier.

I've gone through a helluva lot emotionally, but I'm still standing. There are people out there who are living with the threat of death or poverty or persecution every waking hour and for some of these people, love is what holds it all together. I have seen true love work in the flesh before my very eyes in all ages, races, shapes and sizes. I've seen it when it works and when it does it works beautifully.

"Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear." - John Lennon

Love is something that will never be understood and I hope it never will. It's that search for the meaning of love that has given us some of the greatest things in the world, more so than the search for the meaning of life which has given us a ton of books written by men who spent so much time thinking all the hair on their heads went to their chin.

I know some of you may be thinking "what a hopeless romantic". That's ok. I'd rather be a hopeless romantic than a pessimistic cunt any day of the week. I believe in love and I believe in hope. I believe in child-like, wide-eyed idealism. And I'm not ashamed of it.

...

...I also believe in a good hard shag between two consenting adults purely for the pleasure of it and as a closing line to inject some humor in these proceedings. I now leave you to your regular reading schedule whilst I examine these slides of the mysterious 'cooties'.